In this episode, I talk with Kelton Noyes, a senior technical communicator who started his career in tech support and gradually built his way into documentation. We discuss how to choose documentation tools, practical strategies for making the business case for investing in documentation, and how Kelton successfully advocated for technical writing as a valuable full-time discipline within his organization.

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Kelton and I discuss his journey from tech support to technical writing, which began with his frustration at answering the same questions repeatedly. He started creating documentation between support calls to fill gaps he noticed, sharing these resources with coworkers who found them valuable. His managers appreciated the work, but nobody initially recognized documentation as a full-time role. We explore how he eventually made the transition by demonstrating concrete value through metrics like reduced support volume and faster training ramp-up times and shifting the conversation from advocating for the importance of documentation to advocating for himself as the person to do that documentation.

We dive deep into Kelton's approach to choosing documentation tools, including how to develop a hierarchy of needs based on customer feedback, organizational requirements, and author workflow. He shares the importance of taking advantage of demos and free trials to explore features hands-on, explaining how requirements often evolve during this exploration process as you discover capabilities you didn't know you needed.

We also explore red flags that indicate it's time to reevaluate your tooling, the challenge of finding tools that serve multiple departments, and how to navigate the collaborative aspects of getting organizational buy-in for documentation initiatives.

About Kelton Noyes:

Kelton Noyes is an English major with a love of technology who spent years trying to find a way to blend the two. He started his career working technical support jobs across a variety of industries, including web hosting, security, data storage, solar, and shipping. Everywhere he went, he found a lack of documentation. Between support calls, he started creating documentation to fill those gaps. He documented workflows and processes that impacted his job and shared them with coworkers, who widely used and appreciated the resources. His managers and coworkers loved the work he was doing, but nobody at the time saw documentation as a full-time role.

Fast forward several years to a job interview where the hiring manager recognized the company's need for documentation and loved Kelton's background doing exactly that. Kelton started in tech support to learn the product and began building documentation in his second week. Six years and two promotions later, he's never been happier professionally than he is building documentation full time.

When he's not documenting, Kelton enjoys cooking, board games, reading, debating, general handy work, gardening, and playing music.

In this episode:

• [00:01:20]: Kelton's origin story: From English degree to tech support to technical writing
• [00:02:46]: Current role as senior technical communicator in fintech
• [00:05:04]: Why "technical communicator" instead of "technical writer"
• [00:07:28]: Identifying documentation needs from support patterns and customer feedback
• [00:10:34]: Developing a hierarchy of needs for tool features
• [00:14:13]: Considering author workflow and collaboration in tool selection
• [00:19:28]: Using interactive glossary features to reduce support time
• [00:26:39]: Demonstrating documentation value with metrics
• [00:30:11]: Finding tools that serve multiple departments without overpromising
• [00:35:51]: The importance of demos and free trials in tool evaluation
• [00:41:49]: Making the case for transitioning from support to full-time writer
• [00:43:33]: Using documentation to reduce training time from three weeks to two weeks
• [00:54:11]: Building a culture where documentation is valued
• [01:05:42]: Evolving tooling and documentation standards company-wide
• [01:09:03]: Red flags that indicate it's time to reevaluate tooling
• [01:12:17]: Resource recommendation: Sapling's passive voice tools
• [01:14:32]: Advice: Learn to advocate for yourself and your ideas

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Sapling Passive Voice Checker
• Sapling Passive to Active Sentence Rewriter

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